Tuesday T-Shirt Tales: Briar's Patch Iditarod Team

T-shirt tales? Because every t-shirt tells a story, don't it.
And I have so very many of them. Shirts. And stories. ---- Whaaaaat??

All T-Shirt Tales

SUMMARY: Revisiting a friend's story

SORRY--I posted this and then took it down again because I had a lot more to add.  Now it's back. 

A woman I met through agility decided to run the Iditarod one year (years after ceasing dog agility). She did. She completed the whole thing, and did not come in last. An impressive effort.  I already wrote about it in this prior post, "Goals and the Iditarod", back in 2008.

The picture is her and her team, practicing around the rim of Crater Lake.

Good t-shirts are always worth getting out and doing things in, sooooo--

The shirt apparently enjoyed hiking with the Merle Girls.
Gathering for a hike with the local Sierra Singles group of the Sierra Club. Oct 2008.

The inspirational shirt makes it to the top of our local Coyote Peak
with the Merle Girls. August, 2009. 

The shirt helps with my note-taking at our photo club's macro workshop.
August 2012.

The lovely shirt appears again, at the old Douglas Memorial Bridge 

across the Klamath River near Oregon. 
This old bridge washed away in a massive flood in 1964
after the heaviest rain ever recorded in the area.
They kept the approach to the bridge and the original bears to remember it by.
May 2018.

The new Douglas Memorial Bridge is about half a mile upriver, with newer, fancier, goldier 
California Golden Bears. 

 

That same morning, in my hotel in Eureka (CA), I found myself in a selfie mood.

Who says Zoom work meetings can't be fun?
The Iditarod shirt makes another appearance. June 2020.

BONUS FUN FACT: The shirt looks like a slightly different color in every photo. It's really a lovely rich forest green. I gave up trying to get a photo of what it "really" looks like, because it varies by camera and ambient light. The joys of photography. 


>>  Visit the Wordless Wednesday site; lots of blogs. << >>  Visit Cee's Photo Challenge blog; lots of blogs. <<

Short Hike Involving Excessive Sweating

SUMMARY: Pulgas Ridge Open Space with dogs and Sierra Club.

(Already posted photos on Facebook.)

Haven't been able to hike with the Sierra Singles Wednesday evening group in a while.  Managed to make it to this one, Pulgas Ridge. OK, it's a 40-minute drive (w/out traffic), and it's 500 feet elevation gain, but it's only a 4-mile hike and the uphill isn't really steep.

Turns out traffic was a mess on the peninsula, both on 101 (several miles north, paralleling I-280) and on I-280, where I was. Usuallygoing north at this time of day, a piece of cake. Except everything was jammed up. Southbound at a standstill, northbound seldom getting over 35MPH and usually less. Drat.

Looks sunny, but look at that fog bank pouring over the coastal range.

Turns out that I was NOT ready to get back to a hike like this with avid hikers--I lagged the whole way and they spent more time than they probably liked, waiting for me. Even the dogs were faster and more energetic than I was. Downhill for the return to parking not so bad, but that steady 2 miles of up starting out took all my energy. Gah. Must do more.

A hiking friend offered to use my camera to take our photo at the top of the ridge. She said she'd been sick for a while and was completely out of condition. Still, she managed her usual dashing back and forth and up and down taking photos everywhere and not even breathing heavily. She was NOT lagging at the back of the pack, and I most definitely was.

But everyone was nice--it's a good group--at least they didn't complain where I could hear them, and lots of people asked nice questions about the Merle Girls. One fellow who also has a border collie (actually got her as a rescue via Jim Basic, my agility instructor) has to leave her at home these days as she's too old for vigorous hikes, offered to take Boost's leash and did for a while. It was good training for mama's dog Boost, trying to get her to be a little independent of me and go ahead on the trail with someone else. She wanted repeatedly to come back to see me, but with encouragement from both of us at the right times, she went for longer and longer stretches and greater distances between insatiable needs to go back and touch Human Mom. She liked it most when he ran a bit.

I mostly didn't want to stop to take snapshots, but had to hesitate for a moment to snap the view from near the ridgetop. Southish, looking across at the Edgewood Open Space park.

Saw quite a few wildflowers scattered here and there--lupine, sticky monkey flowers, blue dicks, white ones whose name I don't know, and a few others. Interesting red California bee plant, another native, which showed up long after it was too dark under the forest canopy and in the shade of hte hill to be able to take a photo, but I did again hesitate in my rush downhill trying to catch up, to snap a blurry shot of these really nice globe lilies, yet another native.

Watched hte nearly full moon rise in front of us among the trees in the home stretch; i could go faster downhill but so could everyone else, so no photos of that, either, but I assure you it was lovely.

Wore out the dogs, which is good. Wore out me, which might be good, too. Every mountain is a step back in the direction of being able to keep up with these folks again.

Shoreline Park to Polehenge

SUMMARY: Wednesday night hike with the Sierra Club.

Went out to Shoreline Park in Mountain View, starting at the north end of San Antonio Road. A chilly wind encouraged us all to bundle up, but the amazing patterns and colors of the clouds made up for it. Plus we got in a good, really brisk 5.2 mile conditioning hike among the marshes and sloughs and levees at the south end of San Francisco Bay.

Some highlights:

At the entrance, native flower shrubs were happily flowering, and this bee took advantage of this ceanothus right in public.

I looked up the park online and they asked that "domestic animals" be left at home, but in fact they're allowed on the main road, which is where we hiked. Here these hikers come past an art installation--meaning the birds, not the poop-bag dispenser.

I kept falling behind to take photos. Amazing sky.

Loved how the pattern in the mud flats was the same as that in the sky.

At the far end of our out-and-back hike, we crossed into Byxbee Park, where we encountered the Pole Field. You might or might not care for this kind of art ("environmental art"), but when rays of sun shot under the clouds and hit the Sierra Clubbers passing among the poles, it seemed mystical.

Here's what it's like to walk through the Pole Field.

On the way back, the sun behind us under the cloud cover, I couldn't resist this shot--the long shadows, the golden glow, the high wind-blown waves on the water, the white towers and Moffett Field lit up in the background... oh, wait, you can see all that just by looking at the photo.

All thirty photos, with captions, are on my photo site.

Random Things Around Town

SUMMARY: A lazy blogging day.

If you're like me and love--I mean really LOOOOVVVVVE sprinkles on your ice cream, would you be happy paying $1.37 an ounce in 1.25-ounce bottles as found in pretty much any grocery store around? Sometimes even more than that? How can stores justify charging that much for those tiny bottles? I think you're mostly paying for the plastic, because there are about 2 servings of sprinkles in those little guys.

Or would you go to Smart and Final, buy a mongo 17-ounce jar that'll last you a month or two, and pay a mere 35 cents an ounce? Can you say ice-cream ecstasy?!

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You've seen those ubiquitous, low-paid workers waving signs around streetside to draw your attention to a store or business, right? As I pulled up to the stoplight the other day, I thought there was something odd about this particular person holding up the sign--not a lot of waving going on. REALLY cheap labor.

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Ever since a big wind storm a few weeks back, coming home from agility class in the hills, this dragon's head has been lying in my headlights on the far side of the T intersection. I wonder what happened to the rest of his body?

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I'm thinking that I need a new office chair. It's just my disarming personality, I guess.

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There's a street in Palo Alto that's blocked in the middle from through traffic, and they planted trees in the barrier. Apparently someone decorates them differently every month. Update March 27: "Anonymous" reader found this link that explains it. On the weekly 5-mile walk with the Sierra Club Wednesday night, we were a bit awed by the vibrant spring decor.

A little bird is ready for spring.

Fellow Sierra Clubber camouflaged by the lights. It really brightened up our night, so to speak.

Last Wednesday Night Uphill Hike of the Season

SUMMARY: Rancho San Antonio with the Sierra Club

Almost all the parks around here close a half hour after sunset, which means that between late September and April, hikes starting at 6 in the evening have nowhere to go. Since the Sierra Club Wednesday night hike starts at 6, we instead will prowl suburban areas--typically 5 or 6 brisk miles, but no uphills.

Last night I believe was the group's last night in the hills for the year, at Rancho San Antonio. We hiked briskly the whole way with only a couple of brief stops. Hike was about 5 miles and 500 feet elevation gain, most of that in the .8 miles getting to the Vista Point. (From St Joseph School, along the Lower Meadow Trail, up the High Meadow Trail to the Vista Point, down the Wildcat Loop Trail to the Rogue Trail, and back out the Lower Meadow Trail to the school.)

I started out at the front and did a pretty good job of staying there on the less steep portions.

Along the lower path, we saw two lounging bucks on the hillside in the shade, making for a beautiful photo...

...that is, if you carried your 100-400mm on your Canon SLR, like Bob did (that's Bob's shot)--I didn't even bother trying with my little pocket camera.

We were moving too briskly for me to want to fall behind for photo ops, and most of it was too dark for decent photos with my little pocket camera. Up at the Vista Point, though, it came out of my pocket.

It was not a night for views, wayyy too hazy and with a layer of foggish material sitting on the bay.

The group admired what there was of the view, chitchatted, and discussed which route was the fastest to get back down and out of the park in legal time.

Then someone pointed out that there were two deer grazing not more than 15 feet from us. My camera wanted to do the flash thing, and it also shifted to a higher ISO for a pretty grainy and dark photo anyway.

This deer turned and looked straight at us for a moment. I fumbled just a bit too long and caught her turning away.

Here's Bob taking photos of the same deer.

This is what *his* photo turned out like. That's why he's got a lot of great wildlife shots and I don't. Willingness to haul 10 pounds of camera gear at all times.

Then we turned and raced for the exit, arriving under flashlight power well after dark.

(Thanks to David H (in the red jacket above) for the photos of me; he took more photos, mostly of the group, posted here.)